Shimuzu Luna Ring Solar Power Project

A Luna Ring power station that collects sunlight on the surface of the moon - and then beams that power to the Earth - is the dream of Shimuzu Corporation Group.

(Luna Ring lunar solar power generation video)

"A ring of solar cells would be built on the lunar equator. The power they generate would be transmitted to Earth as microwaves and laser light. Through luna rings, Shimuzu construction hopes to achieve the type of sustainable society that produces enormous and inexhaustible energy.

Clifford Simak had a similar dream more than seventy years ago. In his 1941 short story Masquerade, he thought that it might be possible to capture more of the sun's energy if you moved your collectors closer to the Sun. Mercury, to be precise.

The control room was a wonder of clicking, chuckling, chortling, snicking gadgets. Gadgets that kept the flow of power directed to the substations on the Twilight belt. Gadgets that kept the tight beams from the substations centered exactly on those points in space where each must go to be picked up by the substations circling the outer planets...

This was really free power, easy power, plentiful power. Power carried across millions of miles on Addison's tight-beam principle.
(Read more about Simak's idea for a solar energy beam)